Japan remembers Nagasaki atomic bomb victims

Japan marked the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki with a solemn ceremony on Saturday and a call for world powers to abandon their nuclear weapons.

Thousands of children, elderly survivors and dignitaries in the city’s Peace Park bowed their heads in a minute of silence at 11:02 a.m. (10:02 p.m. EDT), the time the bomb was dropped, to remember the tens of thousands who ultimately died from the blast.

Japan marks anniversary of Hiroshima atomic bomb

Tens of thousands bowed their heads at a ceremony in the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Wednesday, the 63rd anniversary of the world’s first atomic attack, as the city’s mayor hit out at countries that refuse to abandon their bombs.

A bell tolled at 8:15 a.m. to mark the exact moment when the bomb dubbed ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on the city, killing tens of thousands immediately and many more later from radiation sickness.

Why Did We Drop the Bomb?

In 1945 on August 5th at 8 seconds past 8:16AM the atomic bomb, “The Little Boy”, exploded over Hiroshima , Japan . Fifty-one seconds previously, the bomb was dropped by the B-29 Enola Gay at a height of almost six miles. The explosion occurred at a height of 1,850 feet and created a huge fireball, which possessed for a fraction of a second, the temperature of a million degrees. “The Little Boy” had released the equivalent of 13,500 tons of TNT over the city.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Pentagon has notified local authorities that trace amounts of radioactivity may have seeped out of a US nuclear missile submarine during a cruise that included stops in Japan and Guam, navy officials said Friday.

An investigation determined that the amount of radioactivity that seeped from a valve was less than half a microcurie, or less than what one would find in a 50-pound bag of lawn fertilizer, a senior US Navy official said.

Robotic buoy to fight sea pollution

The good people at Osaka University has come up with a prototype of a robotic buoy that has a very specific and special purpose in life – it is meant to combat sea pollution in the event of large scale environmental disasters the world has known as oil spills. The prototype known as SOTAB (Spilled Oil Tracking Autonomous Buoy) is but a 110kg GPS-equipped robot. It will feature a cylindrical buoy length of 2.7m and a diameter of 27cm, and the whole idea is to have these buoys installed aboard oil tankers, enabling them to be dropped into the sea automatically whenever there is an accident. Unfortunately, oil tankers will have to be a whole lot more vigilant and careful for the next three years (at least) since it will take that amount of time at best to roll out from the laboratory.

Japan, Guam notified of radioactive seepage from US sub: navy

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Pentagon has notified local authorities that trace amounts of radioactivity may have seeped out of a US nuclear missile submarine during a cruise that included stops in Japan and Guam, navy officials said Friday.